A large number of people were bundled up in sweaters, hats and coats, waiting for the parade at Shadow Lake Towne Center. It was a chilly Nov. 27 evening, so hot cocoa, coffee and cookies were a popular and free item that ran out fast. They were gone before the parade even started.
At first, light only came from the open shops, but once the parade had begun, from those who were in it. The floats tended to be a small group of members, some with circus-like costumes featuring lights and stilts. Others advertised local companies. Then the Titan marching band came.
While the parade was trumpeting the start of the Christmas shopping season, band members were celebrating the opportunity to get a little ¨breather¨ from the usual demands of the typical marching band season. The instruments glowed with lights that had been strung on earlier that day. They filled out the entire street in neat rows and in an organized fashion.
Prior to the parade, all the band members met at their section leaders’ houses to deck out their instruments.
Kendall Murphy, snare drum section leader, said, “We decorated Wednesday, a few hours before the parade. We split off into our sections, so there’s base drums, snares, and then there’s tenor drums. I play snares, so I just hosted all the snare drums at my house.”
Murphy explained the process of decorating the instruments for percussion. “Normally we use wrapping paper for the base so we don’t hurt the drums.”
According to Colton Tuel, a quads player, the sections went shopping together as well.
“We started decorating at 8 a.m. on Wednesday morning. We met up at the Dollar Tree and Shadow Lake and bought our supplies there, we also went to five below and got some stupid disco balls and stuff,” Tuel said.
The band may have long hours and a difficult agenda to work with throughout the summer and the fall, but in the winter the Shadow Lake Lighting Ceremony’s Parade gives them something fun to look forward to.
“It was just fun to do something different because normally band can be a very competitive thing and we’re like, just go, go, go, but this time we got to get together and decorate, and we get to have a parade…it’s pretty fun,” Murphy shared.
Colton had a similar thought: ¨Up until then it had been like everything is really important, but that’s just kind of our mess around time, which is really nice.”
